The 1916 Company Rewound: Unique Displays of Time Video Round-Up

Watches are the Rube Goldberg machines of timekeeping. Energy starts in the mainspring, rushes to the escapement, teeters back-and-forth to impulse the pallet fork, and finally, circles through the gear train, the counting organ of a movement. This journey, when completed six times, will equal a single second. Though this process remains constant in most automatic timepieces, for some, the display of the time is visibly different. The historical mold of analog timekeeping does not expel artisans in Glashütte and Geneva from creating spellbinding works of art with chiming mechanisms, flying hour wheels, and jumping seconds complications.

Unique dial designs capture the very essence of watchmaking, perhaps encroaching on the territory of wrist art. I like to think it boils down to one characteristic that transforms an object of craft into a work of art: originality. The very existence of art lies in coloring outside the lines of the norm.

We all collect watches for different reasons. Some seek conversation pieces. Others are drawn to impossibly precise engineering, decadent dial layouts, or simply the intrinsic and/or market value. Whatever your motivation, it is undeniable that the thread that weaves our community together is a deep reverence for the architects of our obsession. When we see a watch as more than merely an instrument to tell time, we open ourselves to a world in which chiming mechanisms, flying hour wheels, and jumping seconds further a passion in which we all love.

Watch as Tim Mosso, our resident watch expert, breaks down a curated selection of pieces that present time in unique ways.

About the piece: The movement of the hand on the retrograde scale was developed to mimic the pulse delivered by the heart’s atria before a beat.

 

About the piece: The Type 3’s unique display is possible because of a two-chamber system controlled by Ressence’s incredible ROCS module. The double-decker mechanical masterpiece features an ETA 2824-2 in the air-filled bottom chamber, topped with an oil-filled upper half that houses the discs and orbiting sub-dials. The chambers work in perfect harmony through a magnetic transmission system, uniting the movement’s power with the sub-dials which seemingly float around the circumference of the dial to display the time.

 

About the piece: The Flying Hours differentiates itself from other wheel-based time displays by introducing a multi-axis gear engagement system. The minute track rotates 240 degrees on a central disc while the hour wheels rotate on their own axis and, by joining the minute and hour wheel-gears together, the movement can display time.

 

About the piece: The Zeitwerk’s trademark mechanical-digital time function was conceived to resemble the famous clock at the Semper Oberhaus in Dresden, made by the master for which Adolf Lange studied under. The minute repeater, visible on the front of the dial, was originally designed to help the visually impaired, as well as those keen on time-telling in the dark, before electricity was industrialized.

 

About the piece: In order to reach a true jumping seconds complication, Journe re-engineered their patented remontoir d’égalité, a constant force mechanism responsible for delivering a burst of energy from the mainspring barrels at regular intervals, to work in a one minute loop.

 

About the piece: The regulator dial on the Patek Philippe Annual Calendar separates the hours, minutes, and seconds as, historically, the clock in watchmaking studios would feature three separate displays so watches could be “regulated” to the correct time.